Wilderness
by apyrateslyfe4me
Summary: Mitchie struck a chord when she accused Caitlyn of not caring, but Caitlyn isn't about to confess that. What Mitchie doesn't know, however, is that there are other secrets Caitlyn is unwilling to share as well... One-shot.


Mmkay. Here we go. I was intrigued by this scene in Camp Rock, and I wondered really what Mitchie meant when she and Caitlyn were arguing in the kitchen. After reading the junior novel, my interest in it expanded, and I decided to explore. I do not own Camp Rock, nor the characters.  
Enjoy!  
PS: Who _loves_ the Jonas Brothers' new album? I do!!

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"What about you? You hide, too. This 'I don't care about anything' attitude. Well, if you don't care, then why are you here?"

She let go of a sigh, letting it exit her chest slowly, imagining and wishing at the same time that every thing else she was feeling at that moment had grabbed a hold of the exhaled air and left, too. For once, her laptop remained closed and turned off. Despite where she was, not even music would lift her spirits now. All she could hear was the lapping of the lake's waves against the wood poles that were supporting the dock she was now sitting on.

She placed a palm on her thigh and spread her fingers as far apart as they could go. Her skinny but short legs hung just inches above the water's surface. The sun hung low in the sky, but she knew it wouldn't set for at least another two hours, and then night would come, wrapping her back up into its dark blanket of sleep, leaving far too much time for thought.

As to Mitchie's question, she didn't have an answer. And that was what killed her the most. Even Mitchie-the-liar had had answers: quick ones, too, especially that time when she had first fibbed about her mother. She remembered it well, the first night of camp, when Tess and her minions had found it necessary to remind her what kind of job her parents had…

She knew very well where her parents were, thank you very much, Tess Tyler. She also knew how they made their money, and she didn't need Miss I-Think-I'm-Better-Than-You to shove it back into her gut. But, to be honest, there had still been that stupid feeling of wanting, of needing that acceptance she had gotten so long ago but then had lost. So when she had tried to battle Tess's insult with a quick-minded jab of her own, she very much wanted that same approval. Even if not from Tess, she just needed it.

But thank God Mitchie, with her wide shining eyes in awe of all that was Tess, had spoken up before she got a chance to finish her sentence. Even as it was leaving her mouth, she realized how completely idiotic it would have sounded. She had almost wanted to thank Mitchie for it afterwards, but after Tess and the other girls—and even herself—had fallen for Mitchie's lie and then asked the new girl to sit with them, she had just wanted to punch Mitchie in the face.

She remembered staring at their backsides as they walked away from her. The way they all had sauntered off—including Mitchie!—had just made her want to puke and hide in a corner at the same time. It was like the wilderness. She had kind of, sort of marked Mitchie as her own territory, but then Tess pounced in and claimed the new girl for her own. And Mitchie had gone off willingly. But she didn't blame her—what sounded better, singing on Norwegian cruise liners or filling empty bookshelves at home with shining, golden Grammies? She knew which one she would pick.

She had looked around for Lola, but she saw that the girl had been busy rehydrating herself after her performance, and all of a sudden she felt as though everyone in the dining hall had been looking at her—although when she looked around, she realized that no one cared that she had lost her friend, one of her only friends. This, in turn, had just made her feel worse, and she quickly but stealthily tried to make her escape, hoping no one would notice the tears that had then been falling from her eyes.

And once she had gotten out of that building, it was a straight shot through the trees to this exact place, where she had watched the sun set slowly over the mountains in the distance while hearing the sounds of continuous music coming from the Opening Night Jam. And it was there where she had first begun to think too much.

Tess had been wrong. Well, she had actually been right, but that had been the sarcasm. Her parents were barely wowing the vacationers on their way to Norway. She remembered how it had been hard enough getting together enough money to repair her laptop; and when the Camp Rock brochure had come in the mail, she was almost too frightened to even show it to her parents, much less ask to go. But her parents wanted her to get out, and she wanted to leave.

She fingered the crack on the top of her laptop; the sharp edges of it still remained even after the Geek Squad doctors had taken it under their wing. It had been several months ago, but she still remembered like it had been yesterday. The setting sun lent some darkness to her memory, but even as she wished the sun would stay hanging in the sky forever, the pain of that night came rushing back to her and hit her in the chest like a battering ram.

Tears came creeping down her cheeks as she recalled the night of April 28th, 2007. They had had meat loaf for dinner that night, her favorite. If she had any brains at all, she should have realized then that something was not right. But as her parents had settled down to watch CNN and she had retreated back into her bedroom to work on a song she had just written, she had had every speck of a thought of something bad happening wiped out of her mind.

But the dock was so hard compared to the softness of her bed that night. And the quick "hoot"s of the night owls coming out she now heard were like cashmere earmuffs compared to the piercing "click" of her bedroom door shutting in the darkness. And the crunching noises her feet made on the gravel leading down from her cabin were nothing compared to the slow, gravely voice of her father.

The television had been turned up loud, almost loud enough so she couldn't hear the instruction her father then gave her. And she had refused. But a father's loving touches were turned to violence sooner than later, and the last thing she remembered of that night was holding the laptop up to protect her face and hearing her father's fist make a sickening crack ring through the bedroom. After, the only thing she could recall was a sharp pain on her face. But she knew what came after that.

The next morning she had awoken slowly, seeing her broken laptop strewn across the floor. And as she picked up the broken thing, blood smeared across her nose and her pants lying somewhere near the door, she had begun to sob, much like she was doing now, feeling the little bits of something that was also broken scrape against her insides.

Her father had seen the broken thing, and reassured her he would pay to get it fixed. What he didn't know was that she would have preferred for him to break every single piece of producing equipment she owned and erase every song she had ever written from her memory and hard drive than have him do to her what he had done the previous night. Her mother had just lurked off in the corner of the kitchen, a guilty look on her face, and she wanted to shout, "HOW COULD YOU LET HIM DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS TO ME?!"

She rolled herself up into a ball and fell onto the dock, watching the dark waters beneath her swirl in what looked like an angry torment. She had shoved the brochure into her mother's face, demanding she let her go, commanding her forty-two year old mother that she pay three thousand dollars to let her attend a music camp that, the year previous, they had been able to afford. She had demanded it.

Anger at herself and her mother and her father for letting something like that happen continued to build up inside of her. Everything became rougher: her music, her voice. Even the amount of pressure she put on her pencil when she wrote built up and left dark lines on her clean sheets of paper. Her only emotion release would come at night, when she cried herself to sleep while listening to the angry pounds of her father's fist at her now-locked door.

So she had sought comfort when she arrived at camp that previous summer, doing the exact same thing to Lola as Mitchie was now doing to her. Tess had become her one companion as they were constantly dogged by Peggy and Ella. Tess had become her one confidante, Tess had become her only friend. And there was nothing better than being able to sleep alone, in a warm bed, and in a room where nothing evil could enter. She couldn't imagine anything better than that.

But she had been sifting through old files on her computer, and found one she had somewhat wished she had forgotten. It was a song she had written some time after that one night, and she had played it for Tess and Peggy and Ella. Once again, she should have realized something was wrong. The way Peggy and Ella were crying when it was finished was strange enough, but what should have been stranger was the fact that Tess could only smile.

And it was all quite a blur from there. She had so wanted to please Tess, and that smile had made her think she had. But when she returned from that summer's Campfire Jam to see all her bags packed and lying outside the cabin, she realized that she had done so much more than impress Tess. She had bought her one-way ticket out of the formerly comforting circle and once again into the arms of loneliness, with which she was all too familiar.

She had given too much, too much all at once. She had loved her family, but they had betrayed her. She had been friends with Tess, but she had abandoned her. And then she felt more lost and lonely than ever.

To put it plain and simple, she _did_ care. She cared too much. She was there because she cared too much about proving herself to the people she didn't need to prove herself to. There were things she had to do. She felt as though she had to redeem herself, although, at the back of her mind, she was aware of the fact that she hadn't done anything wrong. But the way she was being punished made her feel as though everything was her fault.

So Mitchie had been right. She was hiding. But didn't Mitchie know that hiding was the only way she could escape from everything? Mitchie thought she had it bad, what with not fitting in and not dressing well and worrying about her singing voice. Mitchie was obviously ignorant to the fact that others had bigger evils. She, too, was worried with not fitting in. But while Mitchie wanted to be popular, she only wanted to be safe.

Her body was now sore with sobs, and she continued to lie on the dock with only the sounds of her crying filling the air. Where was everyone? she wondered, pushing herself back up into a sitting position. Her re-lived memories made her want to throw her laptop into the lake and watch it sink to the bottom, taking everything with it. Her parents, her past…

But the sound of Lola's voice calling her name broke her out of her reverie, and she hastily wiped the tears away from her cheeks. She peered over the edge of the dock, practicing a smile for the girl who was coming to find her, discovering that her cheeks were stiff and sore from crying.

She stood up on the dock just as Lola broke through the bushes, coming over to envelope her in a hug. Lola didn't know it, but it was just what she had needed. And standing there in her friend's arms, even for that split second, she knew that despite everything that had happened in her life, she was safe here.

"Caitlyn, where have you been?" Lola asked. "Dinner is almost over and everyone's heading over to the Pajama Jam. Are you okay?"

"Yes, fine."

"Good. You wanna practice one more time before we go join the rest of the camp?"

She had forgotten that she was going to perform, and after everything that had just happened, she didn't really want to anymore. But she saw Lola's hopeful eyes, her confident smile, and felt Lola squeeze just a little bit of that same confidence into her as Lola held her hand on that dock. She nodded.

"Yes."

Lola smiled again, and dropped her hand. She began to walk off back into the bushes, and Caitlyn stood for a minute, alone, her eyes wet once again. As she shouldered the bag that held her laptop onto her shoulder, a tiny smile struggled its way onto Caitlyn's lips. And she pushed away the bushes and continued to her cabin, where she would find a warm pair of pajamas, just waiting to be performed in.


End file.
